1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which lays out, in a page on the basis of a template, field areas for inserting data of data fields selected from a record made up of a plurality of types of data fields, a control method therefor, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
As various kinds of merchandise are produced, shortening of the merchandise life has recently received attention. The necessity for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and one-to-one marketing has also received a great deal of attention due to factors such as customer's orientation to customized services as the use of the Internet spreads. These methods try to raise the customer satisfaction, win new customers, and keep customers.
One-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing. According to this technique, a database of individual attribute information including the age, gender, hobby, preference, and purchase log of a customer, is created, and the contents of the database are analyzed to make a proposal complying with customer's needs. A typical method of this marketing is variable printing. These days, a variable printing system which customizes a document for each customer and outputs the document has been developed along with the development of the DTP (Desk Top Publishing) technique and the pervasion of digital printing apparatuses. The variable printing system needs to create a customized document in which contents of different amounts for respective customers are optimally laid out.
Generally, when such a customized document is to be created by the variable printing system, containers are laid out in a document. The container is a drawing area for drawing contents (drawing contents (e.g., an image and text)), and is also called a field area.
Containers are laid out in a document, and a database is associated with the layout (various contents in the database are associated with the containers). As a result, a desired customized document (called a document template) can be created. The contents of the customized document can be changed (made variable) by properly switching contents in the containers in the customized document (by changing the association). Such a document is called a variable data document, and a printing system using the variable data document is a variable printing system.
In a conventional variable printing system, the size of a container associated with a text or image serving as contents is fixed. When contents in the database are inserted (flowed) into a container and the data amount is larger than the container size, the following problems arise. That is, if the data is a text, overlapping of the text occurs. If the data is its image, clipping of the image occurs. When the data amount is smaller than the container size, no proper display may be obtained such that a gap appears between the container and its internal contents.
As another technique of changing the layout in order to solve these problems, a “Layout Designing Apparatus” in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 (paragraph 0049, FIG. 8) discloses a technique of, when the size of a given container becomes large, decreasing the size of another container adjacent to the given container.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-171395 (paragraph 0051, FIG. 8) discloses another technique. That is, the items of merchandise specifications such as price, running cost, and processing speed are rearranged in accordance with the priority order of customer's demands. Then, data are input to field areas, and a customized catalogue is saved and output.
In the prior arts, however, when an advertisement is dynamically inserted into a merchandise catalogue to output the merchandise catalogue, a field area for the advertisement is fixed. If the image size or text length changes, the layout is deformed, resulting in a catalogue of poor appearance. In order to solve this problem, the catalogue must be manually edited in advance, decreasing the efficiency.